November 19, 2006

Well, that's not exactly what it says, but that's what it tells us - at least those of us with half a brain that aren't wearing tin hats and grooving on moonbeams.

Shhhhhhh.... , we're not suppose to know because it's another one of those, you know, secrets - the kind we usually learn about from the NYT through characters like Seymour "Sy" Hersh, who just happens to be the source of the latest "secret" (remember, shhhhhh.....) CIA secret which is, as is usually the case - "challenging the White House."

Hersh, this time writing for The New Yorker, reported on whether the administration of Republican President George W. Bush was more, or less, inclined to attack Iran after Democrats won control of Congress last week:

WASHINGTON: A classified draft CIA assessment has found no firm evidence of a secret drive by Iran to develop nuclear weapons, as alleged by the White House, a top US investigative reporter has said.

... The administration's planning of a military option was made "far more complicated" in recent months by a highly classified draft assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency" challenging the White House's assumptions about how close Iran might be to building a nuclear bomb," he wrote.

... "The CIA found no evidence of a secret Iranian nuclear-weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency," Hersh wrote.

"No firm evidence of a secret drive by Iran to develop nuclear weapons, as alleged by the White House"? How interesting.

Hersh and his left-wing Democrat friends in the CIA would have us believe that the world wide jihadist threat driven by Iran and al-Qaeda, and what Iranian officials have been telling us themselves (they fully intend to wipe out Israel and the West), is some neocon pipe dream or dreamed up fantasy because the right loves war. When speaking of delusions, it is the pot that is calling the kettle black.

For example, today we learn that an Iranian judicial official said on Sunday Iran should not fear its enemies because it has built guided missiles and nuclear centrifuges, part of a program Tehran has always said is peaceful:

Iran's prosecutor general, Qorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi, who is also a cleric, did not spell out a link between the missiles and centrifuges, which the West believes Iran has been building to make bombs, a charge Tehran denies.

He told Fars, a semi-official news agency:"Now we have every kind of weapon at our disposal. We have guided missiles using liquid and solid fuel. Our second generation centrifuges have been activated by Iranian experts, and we move ahead every day for the country's independence, what fear do we have of our enemies?"

So, we hear from the CIA, courtesy of their spokesperson and their official press release center, Seymour Hersh and The New Yorker (and surely the NYT on another day soon), that there is no evidence of Iranian intentions to develop nuclear weapons, yet we consistently hear otherwise from the Iranian's themselves and others.

For example, In today's case, what are we to make of the comments regarding those "second generation centrifuges that "have been activated by Iranian experts"? Are the Iranians expecting its enemies to shake in fear because Iran now has enough "second generation centrifuges" to "throw" at its enemies? Is it the centrifuges that are the threat they speak of? Of course not - it's what they make with the centrifuges - it's the plutonium and highly enriched uranium that IAEA inspectors have detected in containers at the Karaj atomic waste facility near Tehran.

Flash memo to CIA: Plutonium and HEU can detonate atom bombs.

Another flash, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declared to the world that he has a "mission from Allah" to fulfill the preconditions required to commence the second coming of the Mahdi.

[...] As such, Ahmadinejad's mission may well include bringing about the apocalypse he believes will pave the way for the return. Such a move would also fulfill the prophecies of Ayatollah Khomeini who foretold that Iran's destiny was to destroy Israel and the United States in a final apocalyptic war.

... "Shi'ite Muslims believe that the Twelfth Imam, or Mahdi, the last in a line of saints descended from Ali, the founder of their sect, vanished down a well in 941 AD," he said. "According to their beliefs, he went into a state of 'occultation,' like the sun being hidden behind the clouds. After a stormy period of apocalyptic wars, the clouds will part, and the sun [the Mahdi] will be revealed. They believe that when he is released from his imprisonment, the entire world will submit to Islam."

... This belief is the driving force behind Ahmadinejad, Ayatollah Khamenei, and the majority of the central figures in Iranian government.

... Once Iran is in possession of a bomb or a missile, Israel or the United States will have to go to the brink of a thermonuclear exchange if either country expects to push a regime-change agenda in Iran. And here's the frightening thing: Considering the desire for a major and decisive apocalyptic event, perhaps that is exactly what Iran's president wants.

As Earl Tilford at The Evening Bulletin.com says, "If the Islamist Jihadists win, the most primitive and sinister form of religious fundamentalism imaginable will plunge the globe into a dark night of barbarism far more horrific than anything Adolph Hitler envisioned for a world dominated by the Third Reich."

If the CIA doesn't wake up and smell the plutonium, they'll have slept our way into the dark night Tilford speaks of - facilitated by radical Islamic terrorists distributing iran-supplied nuclear bombs to the West and Israel - special delivery via local jihadists. It just might do us well to heed the advice of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "It's 1938 and Iran is Germany; Ahmadinejad is preparing another Holocaust." However, this one's for all of us that aren't in the camp of radical Islam, Ahmadinejad, and his Mahdi in the well.

Like Dick Morris says, when it comes to what American's are truly concerned about - It's Iran, Stupid. So, what is it that the American people know that the CIA is choosing to ignore? It's called, "the writing on the wall."